Monday October 21, 2013

Dave Bonta October 21, 2013

Patches of frost in the yard. A yellow jacket from the underground nest in the garden lands on the shoulder of my sunlit coat.

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Sun shining through fog. The garden-wall chipmunk must be in heat: two suitors battle for her attention in what's left of the snow. …

Cloudless and still. Sun gleams on the laurel under the trees. I hear the crunch of footsteps on the gravel road from a hundred yards away. …

After the coldest night of the year so far, I'm basking in the bright sunlight, listening to the quiet hops of a junco approaching my chair. …

As the temperature climbs, I watch the shadows on the snow lose all their blue. The groundhog under my house gnaws on a beam. …

Bitter cold and overcast, but still the porch roof rattles with a staccato rhythm of drips from the second-floor roof's two-inch icicles. …

Querulous cries of a raccoon, like lost notes from a soprano clarinet. Two pileateds hammer for their breakfast—an arrhythmic percussion. …

A wind in the night swept the broom off the porch; I find it in the garden. A thin milk of clouds. The sun's whiskers slowly disappear. …

Fresh excavations in the yard—a puzzle. Have the deer developed a taste for myrtle, the green of its leathery leaves under all that snow? …

Bitter cold. A loud creaking from the edge of the woods, as if from an unlatched door swinging in the wind. Snow cover thin as a ghost. …

A jeering band of bluejays lands in the locusts. Of human noise, nothing but distant jets. Long fingers of sunlight between the trees. …

The Morning Porch/Patio